Personally i would like to see domestic violence remain a stand alone
criminal offense, if they decide to add none violent behaviour to physical
violence and call it domestic violence where does it end.

How do
you prove controlling behaviour in any of its many forms?.

There
is a distinction between coercive behaviour and criminal acts, if you lock
your husband/wife in the house that is a criminal offence, its not
coercive, its a crime.

Right now the way it stands people use
non molest and occupation orders as weapons often with no proof, it has
become a way of getting shot of an unwanted partner, and to block contact with children.

How many men have come to wiki and said i had an argument with the
missus she called the police later, no action taken, now i have a court
summons what do i do, more often than not the advice is accept an
undertaking not to molest the lady, so in effect the bloke did nothing
wrong but promises to continue doing nothing wrong, but must move out and
not contact the hubby/wife/partner.

It will be interesting to
see how the judiciary and lawyers view this.

What''s the difference between co-ercive and controlling? Or just
manipulative? Surely an attempt to define it is going to hand far too much
discretion to judges, juries and magistrates. And despite Forseti''s mini
rant I think co-ercive/controlling/manipulative behaviours apply as much to
women as to men. Actually all the most manipulative people I''ve ever
known were female.

No accurate figures exist for the prevalence of domestic abuse in all its
forms, as it is known to be grossly under-reported so comparisons between
men and women are pretty meaningless.

The term "domestic
violence" is misleading. Organistions such as the BMA and the legislature
here in Scotland use the term "domestic abuse" because it clearly
encompasses both physical and psychological aspects. The definition
already includes psychological abuse so there is no need to include
"coercive control, " it just overcomplicates the definition.

However I
can see that without any outward signs of injury, it becomes difficult to
prove and becomes one persons say-so against the other!

Another
thing that makes me sad is the point Dukey raised that while these things
are brought in to protect people - they can be used to wrongly accuse for
different agendas

I''ve noticed people have different
interpretations of abuse - as an example people say they were bullied by
their STBXs and give an example, some would not bat an eyelid at this and
it would terrify others.

While I applaud progress and detest
DV, it will need to be very robust!

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.Confucius